i bought an akai VX 90 off of cragslist a few months back and i was really excited to get to mess with a real analogue synth. I played it at the owners house for a good 10 minutes and messed around with some sounds, and i was pleased. I think i paid somewhere around 300 for it.

so...

i get it home, i plug it in to my basic M-audio keystation and im messin around. I started pushing some random "advanced function" combinations to see if i could get it to do anything other than change midi channels, and all that ended up happening is my octaves went out of tune. to define that a bit more, when you play a c scale, it goes c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c, well the sounds that the synth is making is more like, c-c-c#-f-g-a-b-c.

so my first thought is, damn it. i figure i used some arbitrary midi command to swap the notes in my octaves. i read something about nprn-s in a midi book, the commands that m-audio has listed for my keyboard are relatively simple, and i tried the "reset all controllers" command, and no real difference.

so i started playing around with it last night, and this is what gets me worried, if i play the affore mentioned octave and the sounds are c-c-c#-f-g-a-b-c, ill play an octave lower, and they are the same relative notes, BUT, when i go up to the original octave and i play it, the notes are different than their orignal deviation, like, it will play c-d-e-eb-f-a-b-c. ... so now im thinkin its something more like the pitfalls of analogue synths, and that my VCO's or something electrnoic is going out on my synth.

those are the things that I have tried, any help would be appreciated , IE suggestions or whatever. I have found close to nothing on this synth on the internet, so i know relatively little about it. If ANYONE has a pdf of the manual, or knows how to address this issue, OR if this issue is even fixable, please advise. mabey its a midi command? is it worth fixing?

Z wrote:Congrats on the score! I had one in the early 90's. Pretty cool machine especially having control of VCF with velocity.

The AX-73 is pretty much the keyboard version of the VX-90 rack. You may find what you need there.

I may still have the manual. I'll check Saturday.

whatever helps is welcome, if you do have it id be into a pdf, or whetever you can send. Im stoked on the machine, but wary of bum gear... Its got some cool sounds as far as I can tell, and im stoked to get to know it some more... Hopefully this works out...

I owned an AX-73 for about a year. It only has a very limited midi implementation. Pitch, mod, velocity and note data (that is all).

The unit requires a tune at startup. So hit the autotune button. It should pause for a moment and display TUNING.

If that doesnt work then I dare say there is some problem with your autotune. It is impossible to change the pitch to note value via midi. Also, try different patches as you may be modulating pitch with the envelope.

ill give that autotune thing a try, and warming up makes sense too... i was reading about the autotune thing last night and it sounded like it involved "slave midi devices," and i wasnt sure how that was supposed to work, but if all i have to do is warm it up and hit autotune, im in good shape.... Ill try it and let you know later today how it works.

Lophophora and justinvm, you guys hit it right. i hit the autotune button and there were no issues at all. I tried that button, but kept hitting other ones trying to make it more complicated than it was.... so. That is great news thanks for all the input, im stoked to get to know it better... and thanks for the lead on the manual, i guess google doesnt search yahoo forums =P